HUFFINGTON
09.15.13
THE BIG QUESTIONS
forces, concepts, and realities” of
the universe and our place in it.
They range from the esoteric, like a
$5 million project to research immortality at the University of California, Riverside, to projects aimed
at a wider audience, like Big Questions Online, a news site updated
weekly with essays by academics
and spiritual thinkers.
At Brown University, the New
passed down instead of lost in the
shuffle of everyday lives?
“One of the things that interests me is whether we can save
young people literally decades of
wasted time in coming to the conclusion that almost everyone does
generation after generation: The
things we thought were important
in our youth when the world was
open to us, when it was our oys-
“WE HAVE STRIPPED AWAY SO MANY OF THE CONDITIONS
THAT MAKE CONVERSATIONS LIKE THESE FLOURISH. AND
THE CONDITION THAT MAKES IT FLOURISH, IN MANY CASES,
IS THE UNINTERRUPTED FULL ATTENTION TO EACH OTHER.”
York-based Recanati-Kaplan
Foundation began last year to
fund a cross-departmental, interdisciplinary lecture and conference series on Ethical Inquiry. Its
goal: to use Greek philosophies,
among others, as a base to inspire
students, faculty and the Providence community to explore the
meaning of a “good life.” At the
core of its attempt is another big
question: How can the wisdom accumulated over the generations be
ter, when the future would bend
itself to our will, really are not,”
said billionaire natural gas and
gold investor Thomas Kaplan, who
started Recanati-Kaplan with his
wife, Dafna Recanati.
Kaplan’s own interest in philosophy was set off in high school
when his mother gave him a copy
of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations,
a major Stoic text.
“There are certain truisms. No
man on his deathbed ever said, ‘I
wish I spent more time at the office,’” Kaplan said, describing one
of the many lessons he hopes to